


concerto for piano, in a minor key not yet decided

by 777335



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Aged-Up Otabek Altin, Aged-Up Yuri Plisetsky, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Demi-Gods, Depression, Drinking, Eventual Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Magical Realism, Music, Mutual Pining, Original Character Death(s), Panic Attacks, References to Depression, Russian Mythology, Slavic mythology, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-18 06:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10611489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/777335/pseuds/777335
Summary: magical realism au, where yuri is a tsar of ice (which, for the purpose of this fic, is almost a demigod, of sorts) and otabek is a very sad and musical young man who has moved to St. Petersburg to deal with the death of a friend.  this is how they meet, and most of the things that happen after.it starts like:Otabek moves to the outskirts of St. Petersburg and becomes friends with Yuri slowly and then suddenly, like ice sliding across a plate.  How he meets Yuri goes like this: (a memory that retains the present tense, because it feels very much like a thing that is still happening to him, not a thing that is over).





	1. concerto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chap is rated t for death of an original character before this begins and also depression.

 

(i)  _movement one: marrow, or where the soul sits_  

 

Otabek moves to the outskirts of St. Petersburg and becomes friends with Yuri slowly and then suddenly, like ice that slides as it melts.  How he meets Yuri goes like this: (a memory that retains the present tense, because it feels very much like a thing that is still happening to him, not a thing that is over)

It is late night and late fall. He has been in St. Petersburg for one month, exactly. He is in a near-empty bar, because last call for the kitchens at this place is not until 3AM. He is trying to eat, because there is no food in his apartment. He stares at the pelmeni he has ordered.

He is cold.

This is a thing he does, he reminds himself. He goes out and eats food and it is not disrespectful to the dead. The plate swims in his vision.

Since moving to St. Petersburg, Otabek avoids certain things such as:

  * returning home for forgotten items, recordings of Wilhelmji’s arrangement of the second movement of Bach’s third orchestral suite for the violin
  * arguing with babushkas at the market when they tell him he is too thin and pinch his cheeks
  * the intersection at pr. Slavy where Erasyl died
  * being alone for too long.



He picks up his fork.

“Don’t!” The waitress’ voice.

 _Don’t?,_ he wants to ask, _I’m sorry,_ he want to say.

He looks up, but she is not speaking to him.

At the table, across from the bar, there are three men sitting, staring at the waitress in silhouette, as though frozen by her outburst. They are seated like this: closest to her, a man with dark hair like raven’s wings. Next to him, stretched out across the table, a man with hair like quicksilver. There is a glint of gold, as he drums his fingers on a bottle of vodka. Across the table from them, a blond. He has eyes like pieces of Afghanistan emeralds, like a soldier, like the end of the world.

“You shouldn’t.” She says, turning over her left shoulder, making the sound of spitting to ward off the devil. The silver haired man briefly looks amused, then loses interest and closes his eyes. “Licking knives- it makes you cruel.” The words directed toward the blond. Otabek sees him consider this advice, chew it up with his back molars, and spit the pieces out _._ He swings the knife between his fingers casually, like a pendulum, and looks at the waitress.

His smile is like a bite.

He licks his knife again.

Otabek thinks of the word irreverence. He realizes he is hungry. He eats his pelmeni, and leaves.

 (Yuri, before Otabek knew he was Yuri.)  

 

 

Otabek had not been well, when he came to Russia, and teeters still between well and unwell. He had purchased the ticket in a fit of strong wine and a consuming silence that threatened to grind him to dust with its weight.  

 _I will go and see,_ he had decided, as though people that had been lost could be found like things. As though he would turn a corner and Erasyl would be there, _did you tell me you were coming to visit?_ _._

The next morning he had already forgotten the ticket, could only remember the fact that he needed to make noise _._ He thought of the word requiem as he touched his keyboard. He received a ticket confirmation two days later; found the order buried in his unread mail, and thought, _terrible idea._  

Erasyl sat on the end of his bed and stared at him, shrugged, _I loved St. Petersburg,_ he said, _I think it’s a fantastic idea._

Otabek glared. _You’re dead,_ he informed Erasyl, _you no longer get to have an opinion on my ideas._ He looked at the email for a long time and then thought, _well, why not?_  

 _Are you sure?_ His mother had said when he told her; _Don’t go,_ his sister had cried _._ He nodded at his mother. He hugged his sister. _I love you,_ his mother had said at the airport, pulling him close, fitting her arms around him like an eyelid over an eye, _don’t you forget, Otabek._

 _Beka, don’t go, please don’t go too,_ his sister had said.

Too was an accusation.

 _I am not going too,_ he had told her, _just going. For a bit._

 

 

When he stepped out of the plane, it was a particularly cold night, like a punch to the face. He was struck with the sudden realization that this was a bad idea, and also the urge to disappear. _I am not going too,_ he had promised his sister, so he straightened his back. _I need to sleep,_ he told himself. Then he would be able to wake.

You must do big things in the evening, so that you can sleep, and then you can refer to them as happening _yesterday,_ instead of as happening _today_. It makes them less consuming.

Observe:

Erasyl had died in the evening, but they had not found out about his death until the next day. So, in one way, they could say _he died yesterday_ , as though it were a thing of the past, and this made it easier because, since it was a thing that was over, there was something to be done next. But, because they found out at breakfast, it had also happened _today,_ and so Erasyl’s death had sat in the corner, glowering like a wild animal, a bleeding thing of the present, and Otabek had to say _I found out today_ ; _my best friend is dead_.

He had known Erasyl since before he remembered, pictures of them as tiny children playing in the yard, at recitals dressed up and uncomfortable in their finery, Erasyl clutching a violin bow in one hand, Otabek's hand in the other. They were best friends; they were brothers. His group of friends had always been tight-knit, but he and Erasyl were closest, in the way you can’t always explain. Some people fit into part of your soul like they were meant to be there.

When Erasyl died, Otabek’s little sister had wailed. Otabek had thought of the word mourn. His mother had wept bitterly. Otabek had thought of the word grief. Otabek could not cry or weep or whimper or lament or any other word.

He sat on his bed and thought of the word numb.

 

His mother sent him to St. Petersburg with a prayer, in place of her presence. The night before he left she was reading, sitting in her chair like always.  She looked very tired and older than he remembered. Otabek thought of the word anguish. He put his hands over his face, fell onto his knees, and put his face in her lap, like he was a child and she could make it better.

 _I don’t know what to do_ , he choked out to her, finally finding tears. His heart felt skinned. _Mama, please, I don’t know what to do._

She put her hand on his hair, heavy with the way only mothers can feel grief for their sons.  

 _Oh, my dear sweet boy,_ she had whispered, _I will tell you a horrible secret: no one ever does._

 

 

 _(ii)_ _movement two: viscera, or weak spots_

 

After Otabek saw Yuri the first time, he seemed to find him always: in the crowds at the clubs; walking along the street like he had a death wish; in a park, trailing after the two men from before, looking at the sky; twirling a girl with short hair the color of frozen currants on a park bench, while she laughed and the snow fell. Sometimes his hair was braided. Sometimes it was not. Sometimes his clothes hung on his frame like he was lost in them, endless hoods and layers. Sometimes they were so tight it seemed he shouldn’t be able to move. Always, it seemed, he was dancing. The way he moved was weightless, like the ground was ice, but only he could skate; everyone else had to tread carefully. There was always a hardness to his eyes.

 _Yes, go, tell me what happens,_ Erasyl said in Otabek’s ear, eyes gleaming, but Otabek thought of the smile like a threat at the bar and told himself, _no_.

Erasyl put a hand over his heart, _why not?_ he wailed.

 _Because you’re dead and a figment of my imagination and we’re not finding out what happens when we say hello to someone with teeth like a tiger,_ Otabek replied.

 _Boooooring,_ Erasyl informed Otabek, with a grimace. 

 _Thank you_ , Otabek replied.

(Otabek wanted to find out what would happen.)

 

Otabek spoke with Yuri for the first time at a dizzying party, after had finished his set and was pushing through the crowd. Yuri grabbed him with one hand as they passed, _that was amazing, your set was amazing, I want to hear more_ , so close, so fast, that Otabek had no idea who was holding onto his arm _._ That sort of compliment that late at night in that sort of club was always an invitation that Otabek didn’t want, and he made to pull away, only then he saw. Yuri smiled, not like a bite at all.   _That was really good._

A surge of pride in Otabek’s chest.

 _Bet you say that to all the boys,_ he responded, without thinking, the way he would have to his friends back home. Yuri had laughed, bright and surprised, like a ringing bell.  _I have more,_ _if you want to hear,_ Otabek offered, unsure where the words came from.

 _I want to,_ Yuri had said, and Otabek spoke before he could think better of it, _I’m Otabek._ But Yuri was pulled back and away by the currant-haired girl, who gave Otabek a smile that said _who do you think you are?._

They melted away in a second, the look on Yuri’s face almost sorrowful. Otabek felt the word _wait,_ like a baby bird struggling to escape from under his ribs, _what’s your name?_ , he called, but they were gone.

Erasyl in his ear, laughing.

 _I thought you didn’t want to know who he was?_ Otabek ignored him.

 

 _Buy me a drink,_ the second time. A command whispered in Otabek’s ear from behind, arms slipped around Otabek’s neck so quick it had been like dying. _My name is Yuri and, don’t worry, I’m older than I look_.  The smell of tart crushed cherries. Otabek pulled back and turned, his hands coming up automatically to Yuri’s hips to balance him when Yuri took an unsteady step back. Yuri looked at Otabek with something close to concern; like he thought Otabek wouldn't remember who he was.

How could Otabek forget?

 _Much older,_ the silver haired man from the restaurant had cackled into Otabek’s ear, appearing from nowhere, pulling Otabek’s hands off of Yuri. Yuri made a sound like someone’s nose breaking.

The silver haired man had eyes like a restless animal; he flicked them over Otabek, appraising him. The black-haired man appeared at his side, whispered something to him, twined their fingers together. They looked at him, in tandem. The silver-haired man’s eyes softened, but when the black haired man's gaze met Otabek’s eyes, they widened, as if in alarm. Yuri pulled Otabek toward him, away from the pair.

 _Let’s go,_ he said. The black-haired man shook his head, as though trying to get hair out of his face: _wait._ Yuri’s hand tightened on his arm.

 _Introduce us before you go,_ the silver haired man cajoled, and Otabek could feel Yuri grit his teeth, while the black-haired man looked on in apprehension, turning between the three of them, his face still saying _wait._

 _My brother, Viktor,_ Yuri said, the world like an unripe piece of fruit in his mouth, _and Yuuri,_ a pause, _his paramour._ Viktor threw his head back and laughed and laughed, and the black-haired man flushed, muttering _Yuri!_ and then _not paramour, it’s_ —Yuri cut the other Yuuri off _, Yuri as well, but with a longer drawl on the ‘u’,_ which Otabek couldn’t tell the difference between so,  _hello Viktor_ and _hello other Yuri_.

His Yuri had crowed with delight. His Yuri. _No, no, no,_ he told himself _. Yes, yes, yes_ , Erasyl’s ghost whispered in his ear _. Find out what happens when you try to make him yours._

 _Yurochkaaaaa,_ Viktor, his voice like a teasing song, as Yuri tugged on Otabek’s sleeve, _we never get to meet your friends, let us talk to him, don’t take your friend away._ It was almost like Yuri stumbled, a strange expression crossed his face, so Otabek guided them away instead. They talked about everything and nothing, on an overstuffed couch, until the club flicked the lights on, encouraging them to leave.

Yuri laughed again, that one ringing peal.  

 _Oh,_ he said, as though surprised, _it’s morning._

(Later: Otabek’s hair is long. The razor buzzes as the barber trims the undercut. _Don’t want me to cut this, yes?_ He confirms, his fingers flicking over the longer top. It is falling in Otabek’s eyes but _no,_ he says, _no, please don’t cut that._    Yuri had told him not to cut it, that it looked so good long like that, that Yuri liked it when it wasn’t slicked back too, when the club got too loud and sweaty and Otabek’s hair fell in a mess about his face. But that had been the third time.)

 

 _Don’t cut your hair and come here more often,_ Yuri said, the third time, twirling an empty shot glass on the table _._ The way Yuri said it made Otabek think of the word malediction, a word as sharp as Yuri’s collarbones. Yuri curled back onto the couch in the VIP section that he had access to _just because,_ he said, with an arm thrown carelessly above his head, his shirt halfway up his chest from the force of his movements. Men walked past, they winked at him; women walked past, they bit their lower lips at him. Yuri did not appear to notice. His eyes didn’t leave Otabek’s.  

“I won’t cut my hair then, but why do I have to come here?” Otabek asked. “Why do you come here?” He leaned forward and fixed Yuri’s clothes for him. Yuri smirked like a cat and then pushed the sweaty hair that had escaped his braid out of his eyes.

“I like to dance.” Yuri said simply, not an untruth. And then—“It’s loud here. I like it, loud and pushy and people and heat. I like the warmth. I miss the warmth.” His eyes turned dark. Yuri’s features gave no hint to an age, sometimes he seemed young and other times very old. Otabek thought of the word discrepancy.

“How old are you?” Otabek asked. Yuri laughed that sudden and bright laugh, clear as fresh ice.

“Twenty.” He said, definitively. “Or I was. How old are you?”

“Twenty-three." Otabek responded. “Was? Was it your birthday?”

Yuri smiled like a broken bone and hummed.

 

The fourth time, Yuri taught him how to make borscht, _for emergencies and for when I come visit_. He whispered the recipe over and over in the low light of the club, eyes the color of absinthe.  Otabek had repeated the recipe in a whisper under his breath, stumbling home from the club, feeling like he was drunk, though he didn’t remember drinking much but the look Yuri gave him.  He held onto Yuri, _(why had Yuri come with him, hadn’t he left Yuri at the club?)_ and Yuri had laughed, so cold and clear it sounded like it was soaked in ice water.

 _Go home and sleep,_ the feeling of Yuri’s nails on his arm pricking like fangs, _the morning is wiser than the evening_ , the ground tilting, _tomorrow you will feel much better._

Otabek didn’t remember arriving home, but woke under his sheets, the deadbolt properly fastened.

 

The fifth time, in the dim light of a back corner, separated from Viktor and other Yuri by a low table, he told Yuri to come over, so Otabek could make him borscht.

 _No, no, no,_ other Yuri said in Otabek’s head.

Otabek thought he could see Erasyl grinning from the rafters.

_Yes, yes, yes._

Otabek had never met anyone like Yuri, who responded to the invitation by kicking the table into Viktor and other Yuri’s knees, _get a room_ , laughing as their drinks splashed, and then looking at Otabek like a feral thing.

_Yes please._

It had been a long time since Otabek had to make friends with someone, his friends had been his friends since they were small, for the most part. He wasn’t sure he was doing it exactly right, but he figured it was close enough.

 

At first, when he had looked at Yuri, Otabek felt the dizzying word obsession, like it was burning on his tongue, and he backed away. When he met Yuri it calmed a little, became like the lingering sting after eating a hot pepper. The word seemed to travel over to Yuri, who looked at him with piercing eyes, like he was trying to understand a particularly difficult question that Otabek had posed. Otabek did not think he was so difficult to figure out, but Yuri seemed to think the opposite and sat tensed and coiled, like he was ready to pounce.  Or run.

 

The sixth time, he made Yuri borscht, and Yuri compared it to the borscht his Deda made and found it _different, but good_ and then, _thank you_.  After, Yuri had pointed at the keyboard Otabek kept by the window and said, _play,_ so Otabek had. _Again,_ Yuri demanded, and then, _please,_ an afterthought, as though he hadn’t used the word seriously in a long time _._ Yuri liked Otabek’s DJ sets for the club: the thrum of electronic music like powdered sugar in the air, the heavy tread of rock like stomping, the dizzying way Otabek mixed classical pieces in, a pulse you had to look for; but he liked the simple piano pieces too.

 _Again._ Yuri demanded, throwing his arms around Otabek’s shoulders and messing up Bach. _Not that one, the first one_.

Schubert’s Ständchen. A lingering and wistful piece.

Otabek pushed Yuri off and then turned toward him, taking a deep breath. _Again,_ Yuri said, petulant, finally raising his eyes to meet Otabek’s. He took a step back, carefully assessing the way Otabek was looking at him.   _What,_ he demanded.  Otabek reached out a hand and asked, _Friends?_ Yuri paused, like he knew this trick and wasn’t going to fall for it, his gaze flicking between Otabek’s eyes and Otabek’s outstretched hand.  Slowly, he reached out and met Otabek in the space between them. _Yes._ He said formally, like a contract was being signed. _Yes, friends._ Otabek smiled, _Okay then, Yura,_ he said, and Yuri laughed, delighted. _Again,_ he said, and Otabek went to play but--

 _no, again.  Call me Yura again_.

 

The days pass. Yuri stops looking at Otabek like he is a problem that Yuri can’t solve and more like he is a thing he likes, like a cat or fresh snow or pirozhki. He stops waiting for something, Otabek was never sure what, but the careful look falls out of Yuri's eyes. Otabek thinks of the word necessary when he looks at Yuri. The days turn into months.

Otabek looks at the calendar. Erasyl sits on the foot of the bed, just like he used to do.  Six months since Erasyl took a breath. Six months have passed. _That's okay_ _,_ Erasyl says, locking eyes with Otabek, _it's okay_.  _Y_ _ou know,_ he adds thoughtfully, _it gets easier with time, Beka, being dead_.

Otabek turns on Beethoven’s piano sonata 14, the first movement, and listens with his head in his hands. It sounds like walking past a cemetery at night and hearing ghosts whispering. He thinks of Yuri’s eyes. He would like to ask Erasyl what to do about the way he thinks about Yuri’s eyes. He tells Erasyl that he thinks he loves Yuri, but he’s not sure what type of love it is. _W_

 _ell, yeah, Altin,_ a deep sigh, _but maybe it’s good enough just to love, no?_

Otabek smiles, _that’s true,_ he responds, _except that sometimes it ends like this: a person you love is dead and you’re sitting on your kitchen floor, talking to yourself._

Erasyl smiles. S _ometimes,_ he says, softly, _but isn't that better than not loving?_

The movement ends. Otabek restarts it.

Someone is knocking. _It’s open,_ Otabek thinks because he has forgotten to lock it again, _it’s open._ The door opens, there are footsteps, a pause, and then Yuri slides his arms around Otabek’s neck, kneels behind him on the floor, presses his cheek to Otabek’s hair. Otabek breathes in the smell of cold cherries. There is a light dusting of snow on Yuri’s sleeves. Otabek runs his finger through it.

“You forgot to lock the door.” Yuri says, when the movement ends, leaning over Otabek and pressing the back arrow, so that it plays again. When it ends this time, Yuri lets go and slides down on the floor next to Otabek, leans back on his elbows. Otabek wants, but he does not know what.

“Beka,” Yuri asks, “why are you so sad?”

“I’m not,” He replies, startled.

Yuri sits up and reaches one hand out, touches Otabek’s cheekbone; his finger comes away wet.

 _Hmm,_ he says. Yuri makes them tea and they drink it, sitting on the cold hard tiles.

Otabek tells Yuri the truth, _I cannot tell you about it right now because it is still much too big, but someday I will._

 _Okay,_ Yuri says. He pours them more tea and they sit, in a quiet sort of silence, one that does not seem to press on Otabek’s ribs.

He thinks of the word home.

 

 

 _(iii)_ _movement three: ventricle, or the hollow space in your heart_

 

Yuri always brings snow with him. He brings cold winds. Yuri seems to thrive in the cold, and Otabek loves the cold, likes warming up after the cold, likes the world painted white. Winter lasts, dragging its feet like a child who doesn’t want to go to bed, begging for just one more hour. When it goes, it dies with a strangely beautiful last storm, the whole world claimed in the thinnest sheet of ice.

In the spring, in the warmth, Yuri seems to fade a little around the edges. Otabek sees Yuri mostly at night. He gets a job playing piano at a café during the day. He writes music. He arranges sets. He talks to Erasyl a little bit less now.

 _This is good_ , he tells himself, and knows that Erasyl would agree.

Yuri visits his Grandfather.

 _Where does he live?_ Otabek asks.

 _Outside of Moscow,_ Yuri says, _it is always spring there_ , he adds, mysteriously. Yuri smiles fondly, and then says,  _I often hope he was proud of me,_ with a strange and sad look.

 _H_ _ow could he not be?_ Otabek asks, and then, _don’t you mean is proud of you?_

Yuri’s smile is a gash.

 _Let’s talk about other things,_ he says.

They clutch their secrets in their mouths like ice cubes and wait for them to thaw.

 

The days turn into weeks turn into months again. Yuri wilts in the summer heat, as though he is melting. Otabek sees Yuri almost every day, in a crowded club or a quiet bar or the late-night café across from his apartment. Viktor and other Yuri watch them, carefully, like wary animals. (Yuri ignores the the two of them). Mila, the currant haired girl, kisses Otabek's cheek softly when Yuri goes to the bathroom, settles back into the couch, and then says something Otabek doesn’t quite catch, but that sounds like _dear_ _sweet boy._ She offers no information as to whom she is speaking of, or what this means.

 

Otabek goes home for two and a half weeks, to see his family.  He holds them close.  He has missed them terribly.  Their house seems large, but full of light. When he comes back to St. Petersburg, Yuri is on his couch, sullen, with red eyes. He looks like he has received bad news, but offers no explanation. Otabek does not ask, holds him and kisses the ends of his hair and thinks,  _please_.

He does not know what he is asking for, or who he is asking.  

 _There is something I must say_. It hangs in the air between them, but Otabek is not sure who is saying it.

They hold hands under tables. They stop caring if there are tables. Yuri rests half on top of him on the couches at the club; Otabek slides his hand under the collar of Yuri’s shirt and traces his bones. They laugh in the middle of the night. Otabek looks at motorbikes, a little braver when Yuri is there. Otabek plays piano and Yuri dances. Yuri seems to solidify a little more around the edges, laughs in front of others now, when Otabek teases him. Otabek plays piano for Yuri and Yuri dances for him.

(Yuri looks like he is made of frost.)

Other Yuri watches them with trepidation, his hands moving like he is trying to help, anxious for something but he does not (cannot?) say what. Viktor watches them like he is waiting for a gunshot, one finger lightly touching the center of his lips like a kiss. Mila braids Yuri’s hair and throws her feet over both of their legs, as though she can hold them here.

They are all like wild restless animals.  

Summer whimpers, while they shake it in their mouths, trying to snap its neck.

It falls, dead, at their feet.

Autumn starts early.

 

It has been a year since the breakfast that went cold. The ice fragment in Otabek’s mouth melts, loosens his tongue, his lips open. He starts at the beginning and says to Yuri, _I want to tell you about my friend._ He tells him everything: from sharing ice cream when they were little, to the one chaste kiss they had shared, to the fact that the song Yuri liked most of Otabek’s pieces was composed from the image of Erasyl tossing Otabek’s sister in the air, her shrieking like a wild and free thing, while Otabek laughed.

Yuri listens.

Otabek’s mouth works around the final words that he has to force out, like splinters. _But he’s dead now._

Erasyl smiles softly from behind Yuri, looks at his hands, and then disappears because, of course, he was never there in the first place.

“How?” Yuri asks, “Where? And when?”

 _Why do you need to know,_ Otabek is going to ask, _why does that even matter where and when? Isn’t it enough to know the word dead?_ But something stops him from being able to say it. Yuri’s eyes look devastated. He plucks at the skin of his arm, like a raven picking at a corpse.  

“Where,” Yuri begs, “and when and how?”

“Here, in St. Petersburg, and a year ago.” Otabek answers, in confusion. “Last fall that sudden ice storm that made the ro-” He cannot finish. “He was trying to-” He has never realized how horrible a word ‘trying’ was. He hates the feel of it in his mouth. He pauses. “There was a lot of ice on the roads.” He says instead. “There was a lot of ice.”

Yuri is the color of fresh snow, becoming translucent as Otabek watches; his skin turning into fine gossamer. Outside a storm rages, snow scratches at the windows like an alley cat; wind blows like a death scream.   _It is not winter yet,_ Otabek thinks, _it is not supposed to be winter yet._ He watches Yuri slip away from him like a piece of ice. It feels like something irrevocable has happened, but he doesn’t know what.

“I’m sorry,” Yuri seems to be saying, over and over, “Oh, oh, _oh_ , Beka, I’m so sorry.”

 _That was not my intent,_ is behind each word.

“Yura.” Otabek says, bewildered by the intensity, by the guilt palpable in Yuri’s voice. _I’m sorry_ is surely a normal thing to say, but not like this, not like self-condemnation. “Yura, it’s not your fault.”

Yuri shrieks once, loud and forceful, pushing himself away from Otabek. The shriek bounces off the walls and shatters Otabek’s lamp. Otabek stares at the broken glass on the floor and thinks, _no, it just seems that this has happened, but that cannot be right_. Yuri sits with his hands resting in his lap, as though he is cradling the head of someone dear to him, someone that Otabek cannot see. They are wet with tears.

Otabek thinks of the word anguish.

“Yes, it was.” Yuri says. “It’s…Yuuri warned me that you and I… and Yuuri knows, he _knows_ even though he couldn’t say because _dola_ can’t say, not even to us, and Viktor told me to listen but- but I, I just thought, I didn’t think that,” Yuri’s words flap at the end of the sentence, like a scarf in the wind.

“Yura?” Otabek asks, reaching out again, _what are you talking about?_ hangs unsaid in the air. Everything is wrong. The world is sliding, the floor tilting.

“Oh, Beka, I--” Yuri raises his hands and a small winter squall appears in Otabek’s apartment. Otabek’s breath freezes in his lungs, the snow catches on his eyelashes, piles on his knees. Yuri puts his hands down, flat, and the storm quiets. He looks at Otabek helplessly.

 _It’s my fault._  

Dostoevsky wrote that to love someone is to see them as God intended, but his mother had told him that you were not supposed to see the magic behind the world.  To see the magic is to see the world as God did not intend. 

“Oh.”  Otabek says, the word feels laborious. He puts his hands over his face and breathes in.  He thinks of the word toska, a dull ache of the soul. “Oh.” He should have known, Otabek thinks, he knew better than to not believe in magic.

(Always we berate ourselves, standing in kitchens after the fact, cups clutched to our chests like talismans, filled with coffee and self-reproach.   _I should have known_ , we say, sighing.)

He should have known.

“I had to. I’m sorry. ” Yuri whispers. Otabek doesn’t know if he’s talking about telling Otabek the truth, or Erasyl dying. Maybe both. Maybe neither. Yuri, his voice sounding so small.  “It was my fault. That storm specifically, and, so, your friend because I. Not that I... but I did, I suppose, but fate-- I cannot change what is-, I-”   Otabek thinks Yuri stops because it sounds like an excuse.

Yuri raises his hand and his fingers move toward Otabek, but then he freezes, as though he has thought better of it.  They thud to the ground like dead things.  Otabek can still see his breath in the air.

“Oh.” Otabek says. He thinks of bike crashes, he thinks of the word culpable, the meaty weight of it on his tongue. It’s not Yuri’s fault and yet he can't stop thinking it is. He is crying, he realizes, and his tears are freezing to his cheeks. He shivers. Yuri lifts up his hand up again and Otabek doesn’t mean to but he pulls away, sharply, like he’s been burned.

Yuri’s eyes flash with hurt and Otabek feels unsteady and unkind.  He cannot breathe. 

 _Go_ , he thinks, in staccato,  _g_ _o away._

There is a snap, like a tree branch breaking under the weight of snow.

Otabek thinks of the word clatter, and then he is alone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pieces:  
> August Wilhelmj's arrangement of the second movement of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, called Air on the G String  
> Schubert’s Ständchen (serenade)  
> Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor "Quasi una fantasia",
> 
> dola: protective spirits that embody human fate, in Slavic mythology (i may be giving them my own spin here, au of Slavic mythology okay)
> 
> thanks for reading ♥


	2. caesura

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last time ended poorly but this time ends….um, okay, kinda poorly as well but getting closer to not poorly! notes about my AU thing, which can be read pre or post fic, are at the bottom. i put them down there so as not to clog up the start of the fic, is all!
> 
> a caesura is a break or pause in music.
> 
> thank you for reading ♥♥♥
> 
> (also i was going to series this but i realized they were too interconnected and one story so. chapters. save the series for if i expand to other stories. which is why you may have seen it and then seen it disappear. idk how to work ao3)

** ** Dusk hangs heavy outside the club, mixing in the air with the early snow. Yuri is leaning against the building under a floodlight, face raised to the sky, snowflakes catching on his eyelashes.  

It has been twenty-seven days since Otabek has seen Yuri, and he feels his heart lurch, unsure of itself as the weight of all those moments presses in.  

The way Yuri looks makes Otabek think of the word incantation.  In this light, Yuri’s hair is the finest spun gold that Otabek has ever seen, and he idly thinks that God must reach down and pluck strands to string harps for angels.  Otabek watches Yuri's eyes flash green, one of his hands upturned and dusted with snow.  Otabek wants to cross the space between them and take Yuri’s hand, melt the snow in it, press their foreheads together, breathe in the same chilled air, but fear stops him.  He wants to explain to Yuri that he still doesn’t understand, that all he knows is how his heart has felt frozen since Yuri listened to him and went away. 

Otabek’s hands ache with emptiness. 

 

That night Yuri had snapped out of existence, leaving behind a snowdrift and stillness in Otabek's apartment, Otabek had lain down on the cold tile, pressed his cheek into the melting snow, and practiced breathing.  Every time he closed his eyes, Yuri’s hurt face flashed across his mind.  He put his fingers in his ears to stop hearing Yuri’s voice break on repeat,  _I’m so sorry,_  but then all he could hear was the shuddering thud of his own heart.   _Go away._

Magic being real was one thing to deal with.  Yuri being magic was another.  Yuri accidentally making Otabek hurt was another.  Otabek making Yuri hurt was another.  Erasyl.  Almaty.  St. Petersburg. Snowstorms. Magic.  Accidents.  Ice.  There were too many things, and Otabek kept dropping one and picking up another, unable to keep focus.  He thought of the word implausible, of the word broken, of the word enchantment, of the word adore.    

He purchased a plane ticket to Almaty for the next morning.  He left without sleeping and with no bags.  He thought he remembered to lock the door; he was lucky he remembered his passport.

He showed up at home, red eyed and unhinged.  His mother looked at him and, though she must have wanted to ask, didn't.  Just said  _oh sweetheart,_ and opened her arms, like she used to when he was little and came home crying with a bleeding knee.

He curled up in his childhood bed and let his mother cover him with soft blankets, bring him small cups of hot tea with cream, put on movement after movement of violin music.  Erasyl’s music.  He let his sister clamber onto his bed and tell him stories of school and friends and the small intricacies of her daily life while he braided her hair and bit back tears. 

His heart hurt.   

He barely made it to the bathroom the next night, threw up once, twice, shaking, unsteady.  His mother found him on the tiles and led him back to bed, as though he was small and ill.  She did not ask, but he told her what he could- Yuri.  That Otabek thought he had done wrong to Yuri, thought he needed to speak with Yuri but didn’t know the words. 

He cried in a way he had not cried in a long time, the heaviness of all of it pressing down on his ribs. 

The next night, he snuck out of the house like he was seventeen again.  He fell asleep whispering to Erasyl’s ghost in the park where they used to go to talk and plan and write music and sip pilfered spirits.  He woke up alone, covered in frost. 

Otabek felt drunk, though he had not been drinking, and lurched back to the house where his mother drew him a bath and sat outside, leaning against the closed door, talking quietly, telling him how she had met his father, telling him the story of their family.  She tucked him into bed again, as though he was a child.

He stayed in Almaty for three weeks, until breathing came more normally and he could straighten his spine.  Until magic seemed far away, and he could almost believe he had imagined most of it, except he didn't want to believe he had imagined Yuri. If Yuri was real then maybe magic was as well.    

His mother did not ask, except for once. 

_I'm going back to St. Petersburg,_ he told her, and watched her hands still as though in fear, hovering over the food she was preparing. 

_Will you be okay?_   She asked, and then,  _are you okay?_

_I’m going back,_ he told her, knowing it wasn’t an answer, but hoping it would do,  _I have to._

It happens before he understands what is happening.  He is spun around and pushed up against the brick wall.  He feels his head knock, sees pinpricks of light.  When his eyes refocus there is only Viktor; he looms in front of Otabek, taking up his entire field of vision.  Otabek vaguely thinks  _this is what death looks like._

Viktor puts one finger under Otabek’s chin and pushes Otabek’s face upward.  One fingertip is the only part of Viktor touching Otabek, but the force is compelling; chains could not keep him more securely to the spot. 

“Stay away from him.  Why are you staring at him?”Viktor demands, a question that sounds like a trap, his nail sharp like a dagger point under Otabek’s jaw. "What do you want?"

“Viktor.”  Otabek chokes out and everything stops.  Viktor’s eyes flash with something that Otabek doesn’t understand; he looks bewildered.  “Viktor, please.”  Otabek whispers, without knowing what he is asking for, doesn’t think Viktor would actually hurt him.  “I.  Yuri.”  Viktor’s mouth twitches with uncertainty.  The force of his finger lessens. 

Yuuri is behind Viktor in the space between one stuttered inhale and the exhale, his hand going up to Viktor’s wrist so lightly that Otabek doesn’t think the touch will leave fingerprints.

Viktor drops his hand and takes a step back toward Yuuri, eyes still on Otabek, heavy with mistrust.  The air around Viktor is thick with the cloying smell of violets after they have been sitting on the table too long, desperate for new water that you have forgotten to give, because you have been wondering how to get out of bed when the entire world is hurtling through space so fast.  Yuuri puts his fingers on Viktor's cheek softly.  Viktor turns toward him, following the touch.  There is a frozen pause. 

“You remember him.”  Viktor says finally, turning back to Otabek, eyes wolfish.  “And you still know me, know us?” 

Otabek remembers Yuri looking at him the same way when they first met- like Otabek wouldn’t remember who he was.  Like it was a shock every time Otabek did.

Otabek nods.  _Of course I do,_ he wants to say, and then,  _I think I do._

“You do?” Viktor demands, his voice like a storm sweeping in.  “Why? It's been too long, you haven't seen us for ages, no one remembers like this.  We just,” he waves his hands, “fade.  Even when they  _try_  to remember us.”  He stops, as though he has said too much, puts a finger against his lips and taps, twice.  Peers into Otabek’s eyes.  Otabek feels like he is looking at a vanitas painting, _consider your mortality and repent,_ and can’t stop the shiver that creeps up his spine.  "What are you.”  Viktor whispers to himself.   

Yuuri steps between them before Otabek can try to answer. 

"Otabek, hi, it’s been so long."  A small wave, a half smile.  "Listen, you need to talk to him, to Yuri.  You need to speak with him.  This is not right, none of this is right.  It’s been winter since you left.”  Yuuri wrings his hands in distress and then reaches out for Viktor, twining their fingers together in the dark.  Otabek can't tell if the touch is for Yuuri’s comfort or to console Viktor, who huffs like a wounded animal.  

“It is not,” Viktor begins tiredly, “my place to say this."  He had fallen into the oldest trap, Otabek thinks.  Had seen Otabek and Yuri and trusted that maybe they could make each other less lonely, even though it never works quite that simply. 

Viktor looks at Otabek, and then says slowly and carefully, as though choosing his words with great difficulty, as though he has not spoken Russian for a very long time.

“What do you think Yuri is?”  The answer is a point on a map that Otabek needs to travel to. 

Otabek thinks of Yuri’s quiet surprised laughs, thinks of Yuri's smirking grin, thinks of Yuri dancing.  He thinks of Yuri throwing himself around Otabek like a well-worn jacket, bolder in touch and voice as time passed. He thinks of Yuri wearing a sweater that swims around him and falls off his shoulder to reveal the delicate sculpt of his collarbone. He thinks of Yuri making tea in the kitchen, standing in relevé stirring borscht, taking Otabek’s sadness in stride, letting his own sadness out slowly, learning how to trust.  He thinks of Yuri’s hair like a bird’s nest of spun gold in the morning light.  He thinks of the way Yuri’s eyes close when he laughs and means it.  He thinks of Yuri’s smile brighter than the midday sun off snow.  He thinks of the way his ribcage seems to expand when he is with Yuri, like there is more room for air to enter his lungs, more space for his heart to beat.    

He thinks of these things first; then he thinks of the snowstorm in his apartment. 

“Magic.”  He whispers, meaning it in more definitions than he knows the words for.  “Magic.”

Viktor smiles, but it is slow to reach his eyes.  Yuuri looks down at the ground, his hand is gripping Viktor's so tightly that his knuckles are white.  Otabek feels his soul crinkle, just on the edges, paper caught flame. 

_Please don’t tell me,_ Otabek thinks, brokenly.  He is afraid of what they will say next. 

He thinks of Yuri smiling from the couch, leaning over the back and reaching with grasping hands, calling  _Bekaaaaaa, bring me teaaaaaa,_ pressing on the sounds to convey the urgency of the request, falling on his back and waving his feet in the air,  _Beka, I’m dying without tea_.  Otabek leaving the tea on the counter and throwing himself over the back of the couch, landing on Yuri and hearing the breathless laughter spill from Yuri's lips.   _Say please, Yura,_ he had reminded Yuri, Yuri’s hands up to catch Otabek’s face between them,  _say please._ Yuri, fingers dancing on Otabek’s cheeks, drawling out  _pleeeeaaaaaaseeeeee,_  pulling the vowels along like they were too heavy for the word to carry properly.   _Well, okay then_ ,  _Yura,_  Otabek had said and put his nose into the crook of Yuri’s neck, Yuri’s hands going up into Otabek’s hair, twisting the strands and stroking.  They had stayed that way for a moment, just breathing. 

How nice it had been, to breathe with ease.  

“Magic.”  Viktor repeats, and the word falls heavy from Viktor’s mouth and shatters on the ground at Otabek’s feet.  “Yes,  _yes_ , magic.  But how do you think you become magic, Otabek?  Do you know how you become our kind of magic?”  His questions are a demand, each word is a knife and they twist.  Otabek thinks Viktor hates himself for having to ask this, for having to tell some of Yuri's secrets. 

_I don’t want to know this,_  Otabek thinks desperately.  Somehow, he already does know, and thinking of it is sickening, a swinging sort of nothingness, like someone has reached inside him and snipped the thread that connects his soul to his body. 

He thinks of Yuri showing him how to do a tendu, insisting the whole of ballet starts from this movement, crouching on the ground and moving Otabek’s foot with his hands— _here, like this, Beka, like this, tendu à terre, and in and--_ standing and trailing his hands up Otabek’s legs, landing on his hips, smiling before turning away,  _watch me again._ The arch of Yuri’s foot.  The line of his leg as he points his toe.  A feeling like hunger in the pit of Otabek’s stomach. 

“Otabek _,_ ”Yuuri’s voice as light as powdered snow, “tell us.”

 ( _I'm older than I look, I was twenty, I hope he was proud of me, let’s talk about other things)_  

“I would imagine,” Otabek starts, but his throat is too dry.  He wants to catch snowflakes, let them melt and turn to wet in his mouth.  He remembers Yuri laughing so bright and loud and honestly that Otabek had thought of the word  _joy_ and, for the first time in a long time, remembered what it meant.  “I would imagine,” he tries again, “that first you have to die.”  Otabek’s tongue is frozen; he feels it break off in his mouth with the weight of the words. 

“You really,” Viktor says sadly, “rather have to.”  Viktor is pulling away and fading into blackness, dragging Yuuri with him, “I’m glad you remember him, Otabek.  I’m sorry I told you to stay away.  I thought something else, but I was wrong.  Now fix it, please.” 

“Talk to him, Otabek.”  Yuuri’s voice, Yuuri who is a sparrow, a cat, a mouse, an owl, and then himself again.  “I know it’s scary but talk to Yuri, please.”

There is a sound, like vodka being poured into a glass, and they are gone.   

It is difficult to stand.  Otabek sits in the snow and tries to breathe.  The air hurts. 

He thinks of the word immensity, and sways in the depth of it, in his nausea.  He watches the snow pile in his upturned hands.  

“You’ll freeze to death out here.”  Mila admonishes gently, from under a giant hood of fur.  She crouches in front of him and leans in close.  She smells like fresh flowers and freshly turned dirt and he thinks he sees a small live fox poking his head out from around Mila’s neck.  That must be wrong.  His head hurts.  The fox chatters and winds around her neck.  Not wrong. 

_Magic._ There it is.  He rolls the word around on his tongue.  

_Oh, sweet boy,_  she says, and leans over and kisses the corner of his mouth, her hair trailing like wisteria vines across his face,  _oh sweet boy,_ she says, pressing kisses across his cheeks, holding his hands in her warm ones.  

“What do I do?”He asks her, an echo of the question he asked his mother before he came to St. Petersburg.  No one ever knows, but we always ask. 

“Sweet Otabek,” she says, “have you ever thought about which is the greater grief-- being alive and seeing something dead, or being dead and seeing something alive?"  He leans forward and put his head on her shoulder, buries his face in the fur.  She presses a kiss behind his ear.  It feels like a bee sting.  “No one ever really bothered to care for him before, not like you.  You made him smile so much.  He was so afraid to lose you.”  She brushes some snow off his hair, tucks a long, wet lock behind his ear; her gentleness reminds him of his mother’s hands.  “People tend not to remember us for more than a few days.  Maybe a week, or two if we’re lucky and we saved their lives or tried to kill them.  But you-- you just kept remembering for no particular reason.  How terrifying wonderful it must have been for him.”  Her hands push him upright; she looks him in the eye.  “Although then you left, but I suppose you can’t really be blamed for that.”    

Otabek doesn't know what to say, his brain reeling to process, to keep up, so he goes with seems most pertinent. 

“I don’t want him to be dead.”  He tells her.

“Dear heart,” she says, “death is good, though I know it’s sad, but everyone dies, that’s what makes humans human.  Trust me, it’s not so good to live forever.”  She waves her hands, as though dispelling the thought.  “You know Otabek, Yuri was so distressed by how much he loved you.”  She smiles and corrects herself.  “Is distressed.  Loves you.”  Otabek feels the melted snow drip down his back.   _Loves him._

“How did Yuri die?” Otabek asks without meaning to.  “When?” 

Mila looks at him, and he thinks of the anger and confusion he had felt when Yuri asked the same questions about Erasyl.  

“You should ask him but, does it matter?”  She says, after a moment.  “How will you die, Otabek?  Does that help to know?  There are many different kinds of dead, and they’re not all the same.  Some are much worse than others.  Like having a heart and forgetting to use it; that’s very  _very_  dead, the worst kind.” 

Otabek puts his head in his hands and blinks snow into his eyes.  “I don’t want Yura to be dead.”  He tells her, again.

“Otabek,” Mila says, sighing like water running over rocks, “Yuri might be dead from one perspective, but from another he’s not dead at all, is he?  He’s alive and he’s real.  Maybe it’s a different alive than you were expecting, but that’s not so important.  What’s important is he  _trusts_ you. You might not know it, because you mortals are always so staggered by our enchantments and think magic has to have fire and smoke and potions and curses, but there's a magic we can't touch.”  She pulls his face back up, locks eyes with him.  “Do you want to know a secret?  Do you know what a grave and serious and  _wonderful_  treasure it is, a person’s trust?  And that someone would give it to you willingly?  That's magic, Otabek, the warmest, strongest kind of magic, just like love.”

_I come here to try and feel warm_ , he remembers Yuri saying once.

She smiles--  _did you think he meant warm like temperature, silly boy? --_  and he thinks of Yuri asking, one night many months ago, when they stopped going to the club unless Otabek had a show, standing at the doorway, one hand on the knob to leave—

_Actually, since it’s so late, can I stay here, maybe?_   Worried, like Otabek would say no.   _Of course,_ Otabek said,  _of course, Yura. Of course_.  Yuri had curled up next to Otabek on the bed, swimming in one of his sweaters that was sizes too large for him, pulling his knees up and rolling over to touch Otabek’s shoulder so lightly, like he was scared.   _I’m so warm when I’m with you,_ barely a whisper _._   Otabek had rolled on to his side and wrapped his arms around Yuri, pulled Yuri close without a word, ran his fingers over the jagged sharp of Yuri’s shoulder blades, not understanding but wanting to.   _You make me feel so warm,_ Yuri had mumbled into Otabek’s chest, fingers curling in the neck of Otabek’s t-shirt.  

How strangely intimate the way they touch, Otabek thinks now.  They’ve never kissed properly, but Otabek thinks he could draw from memory the planes of Yuri’s body, down his jawline and over his collarbones, the curve of his ribcage and hips bones like a city skyline.

Mila brings him back with a soft finger to his cheek.  _Warm._

Warm like the feeling when he sees his little sister smile with pure joy; warm like talking with Erasyl when they were younger, falling over each other with smiles and ideas; warm like his mother laughing for the first time after his father died, just when he had started to get worried he would never hear the sound again; warm like the feeling in the pit of his stomach when Yuri is sitting next to him on the couch, fiddling with Otabek’s hair, humming a song Otabek doesn’t know, steaming cups of black tea waiting to be drunk, hours to talk before they have to sleep.

Warm like when you find a piece of your soul you didn’t know you were missing, and it yawns and curls up into its proper place in your heart. 

The fox chatters and runs around Mila’s shoulders, down to the ground, noses over to Otabek and nips at his fingers, crawls back up Mila's coat and nests on her shoulder comfortably. 

“I like you very much, sweet Otabek.” Mila muses, lifting a hand up to run through the fox’s fur, “I think that you and Yuri are good for each other.  I’ve told you these secrets to see what you will do.”

“Who are you?”  Otabek blinks away snow.   _What are you?_

Mila grins sharply.   _Sweet boy_ ,  _I’m just Mila_.  Mila who seems to talk to the wild animals in parks, Mila who calls him sweet boy, Mila who has a fox around her neck, hair like frozen currants, a touch like a mother’s hand, a smile sharp like chicken talons.  Mila, who Yuri always calls Baba. 

_Oh_ , Otabek thinks.

When Mila leaves, it is with the sound of a twig snapping in the forest. 

Otabek stands and dusts off his sodden pants, warms his hands with his breath, shuddering against the cold.  He does not know what is the right thing to do.  He wants Yuri at his side, with the flash of moonbeams reflecting off him like he’s made of broken ice.  He wants to not know what he knows, to go back before he knew that there was a hidden world behind this one.  He never wants to lose the knowledge he has gained.  He wants to tuck Yuri's hair behind his ears, make them tea, and sit.  Talk, if Yuri wants to; be, if Yuri does not.  Otabek wants a thousand different things at once, but the word that rings clearest in his head is apology.  He remembers his mother reading Tolstoy, doling out the lessons to him in simple bites, telling him that when you love someone you love them as they are, full stop.  You can't love people as you wish they could be.    

He takes the step off the curb, but the spot below the floodlight is empty; Yuri is already gone.

There is a patch of ice where he stood, spreading across the bricks, bright like frosted mercury, and Otabek reaches a hand out to touch.  His fingertips stick.

It hurts, when he tries to pull away.   

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slavic mythology/magic realism/demigod AU.
> 
> Mila is kind of a take on Baba Yaga, except without the bits about eating children and being terrible and hideous. There are many Baba Yagas; Mila embodies femininity, strength, nature and the maternal.
> 
> Yuri is a demigod/tsar of ice, bitter colds, and snowstorms. He chooses to look as he did when he passed, though he can change age as he needs or wants.
> 
> Viktor is a demigod/tsar of winter and, partially, death. He worries that Yuri will end up like Viktor was; Viktor was alone for a long time and used to blame himself for the sadness/death that occurs during winter.
> 
> Yuuri is a dola, a protective spirit of human fate. Yuuri floats through various shapes when he is anxious (dola are known as shape-shifters). Yuuri has knowledge of fate and people’s paths.
> 
> Otabek has an undercut. It’s gettin’ pretty long because Yuri doesn’t want him to cut it, likes to thread his fingers through it, slick it back and then mess it up with his hands. Nice.


	3. divertissement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> otabek takes a bunch of shots, yuri is briefly a cat, and there is a small happy snowstorm.
> 
> no, really.
> 
> //
> 
> It is hard to find Yuri.
> 
> He tries, when Mila leaves and Yuri is not outside the club, Otabek pushes his way inside and roams the dance floor. Yuri is not there.
> 
> He tries the next night, shrugging off hands and elbows as he searches. Yuri is not there. The club closes at last guest. Otabek is last guest. 
> 
> He tries the next night, Yuri is not there and Otabek thinks of the word ruined.
> 
> He tries the next night, feeling more and more out of control as the hours pass, shoving someone away harder than he intends to when they knock into him. Otabek feels bile clawing at the back of his throat. Yuri is not there. 
> 
> (Yuri is possibly nowhere.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not only is this chapter happier, it's shorter. win/win. it does end happy, i swear. 
> 
> (it's a divertissement because it's sort of a lighter break, after the heaviness of the first two chapters.)
> 
> tw//description of a panic attack, alcohol.

It is hard to find Yuri.

He tries, when Mila leaves and Yuri is not outside the club, Otabek pushes his way inside and roams the dance floor.  Yuri is not there.

He tries the next night, shrugging off hands and elbows as he searches.  Yuri is not there.  The club closes at last guest.  Otabek is last guest. 

He tries the next night, Yuri is not there and Otabek thinks of the word ruined.

He tries the next night, feeling more and more out of control as the hours pass, shoving someone away harder than he intends to when they knock into him.  Otabek feels bile clawing at the back of his throat.  Yuri is not there. 

(Yuri is possibly nowhere.) 

Otabek goes to the bar and has two shots of vodka to calm himself, one after the other. Feels the familiar burn and lets it wash away the acid in his mouth. The bartender hovers nearby, pickled cucumber slice on hand; it takes a minute for Otabek to remember he’s breaking about nine etiquette rules for drinking vodka.  He inhales shakily, accepts the slice of cucumber, and bites into it hard.  He clenches the edge of the bar and tells himself it will be okay.  Tells himself that Yuri is real.  The club swirls with life around him.

When he feels more in control, he scours the dance floor again, peering into the VIP space, following blonde hair around corners.  Yuri is not there.  Otabek goes home.

He tries the next night.  Yuri is not there. Otabek has three shots of not-vodka and it burns up his insides and the world spins.

He tries the next night and the next and the next and the next.  He tries different bars, different restaurants, different liquors, but always ends up back at the same club.  The club where he met Yuri.  He can’t find Yuri.  He punches a tree near his apartment and stares in confusion at his bruised and bloody knuckles.  They don’t hurt. 

(Not yet.)

He calls his mother the next morning, as he bandages his hand, to tell her that he is doing fine. 

During the days, he roams parks and coffee shops, the ballet studio where Yuri practiced, the record shop they always went to, any place he thinks Yuri might be. 

Yuri is nowhere.

He tries the club again.  Yuri is not there. Otabek goes back to vodka, has one shot too many, and almost gets in a fight on the way home. 

He tries the next night. Yuri is nowhere to be found and neither is Mila and neither is Viktor and neither is other Yuri, whose name he can now say, but his Yuri huffs with happy amusement every time Otabek says ‘other Yuri’.  Tears sting his eyes.

A guy leers at him; Otabek can’t tell if it’s lewd or mocking.  He goes home.

In his apartment, he pours a shot of vodka into a tumbler and drinks it down. He fills up the bathtub, pours another little-more-than-a-shot, takes the tumbler with him, sits in the tub until the water is cold, gets up, has another shot, drips all over his kitchen, puts on sweatpants, puts on the kettle, makes tea, plugs his headphones in, tries to play and ends up pounding on the keys in frustration, puts his head in his hands and tries not to scream. He gets up, tosses his still full mug of tea in the sink, and then shrugs, swigs a shot right from the bottle.

More than a shot.

Everything burns, but it’s ice cold, and he finds it easier to close the bottle, put it back in the freezer. It is bad luck not to finish a bottle of vodka, he vaguely remembers, but you’re also not supposed to drink it alone and not without food and certainly not without a reason to celebrate, so he’s doing very poorly on that, just in general.

He laughs, a bitter and dry sound, and practices tendus on the tile, trying to remember the way Yuri’s body had looked.  Otabek, dizzy and tired, unable to get his feet to move properly.  Ballet, it would seem, is not for him.

He drinks water from the tap, eats cherries that he had bought from the babushka down the street until his fingers and mouth are stained red, and somewhere between passes out and falls asleep on his couch.

When he wakes, it is afternoon and the sun is accusingly bright. He goes across the road and gets coffee, black and bitter.  He drinks it down quickly, hoping it will make his head clear.  He feels his stomach recoil in protest, makes it back to his apartment, tries to eat some bread to calm the nausea, but it sticks in his throat.  He brushes his teeth and curls up numbly on the couch.

He can’t breathe right.

He can’t find Yuri, he can’t apologize, his mother must be sick with fear because she knows he’s not okay, he made his sister cry, he missed a show at the club which means it’s going to be hard to get another, his reputation as a reliable DJ has to be fucked, he has no savings, he _can’t find_  Yuri, Erasyl is still dead, and everything is so  _fucked_ and he’s missing the  _fucking point_ , he doesn’t know what he’s doing with any of this, any of _anything_ , he can’t think of the word to describe how totally  _fucked and confusing_  everything is and maybe he doesn’t talk a lot, he’s never been verbose, but not being able to find the word he wants drives him insane and he just wants to  _see_  Yuri, even if he can’t apologize, to prove to himself that Yuri is fucking  _real,_  because at this point he’s not sure, and he can’t find him and everything is so _fucking_ \--

His lungs feel unimaginably constricted.

He stumbles to the window, heart beating erratically, and tries to open it to get some air. The fresh air will help, he tells himself; the chill will calm him down. He fumbles with the lock, fumbles with the handles on his hinged windows, slamming his hands against them, pushing forward too hard.  The window flies open, and Otabek nearly falls the two stories down, a flurry of snow hitting his face.

It doesn’t help.

He’s aware that he needs to calm down, but all he can do is clutch the windowsill and not be able to breathe right and--  _fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_. The more he tells himself to calm down the more he can't.  _Get a grip, Altin,_  he screams at himself, hands shaking, and that only makes it worse,  _fucking get a GRIP_. Much worse.  _Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_.

A black cat hops through the open window from the tree branch nearby, followed by an impossibly small pale kitten that sits on the sill, as though it’s not sure if it’s welcome inside, one tiny paw hesitating in mid-air.

The cats look at him, worriedly.

“Otabek?” The black cat asks, growing tall and stretching and becoming Yuuri all in one disconcertingly long half-second, in a way that makes Otabek fairly certain he is going to be sick.  “Otabek, breathe in for me, okay? Breathe in with me, like this.” Yuuri inhales measuredly, holds at the top, and breathes out slowly. This seems impossible to Otabek.  “Otabek?”

“Can’t.” Otabek manages, dimly aware the room is fading, dimly aware of Yuuri’s arm on his elbow leading him away from the window. “I. Can’t.” He chokes out each word as a separate thought.

“I know.” Yuuri says calmly, his voice a string Otabek grasps at. “You’re having a panic attack. It will pass, I know it doesn’t seem it, but it will. Breathe in and then breathe out with me. That’s all for now, okay?  That’s all we have to do right now.”

Otabek struggles with it, shuddering in something like an inhale. He manages a shaky exhale on Yuuri’s long count.

“Good.” Yuuri counsels, “Now, in-two-three-four.”  _Common time_ , Otabek thinks wildly,  _4/4_ , he knows this; this is the base of music.  _Like a song_ , he thinks, listening to Yuuri’s soft counts of four, _like a song_.

Otabek remembers how to breathe, while Yuuri stands by, letting go of Otabek’s arm, still within arm’s reach but not presuming to touch, as Otabek’s breaths normalize.

“A little better?” Yuuri asks softly, after a few minutes.

It is a little better.  He inhales and exhales again, stuttered, but deep.  The blond cat winds around his feet and then backs away. 

“That has not happened in a long time, that bad like that.” Otabek manages, running his hands through his hair, still shaking.  He shudders and reaches out for his piano, plays half a scale with one hand, up and down twice. The notes ring heavy and he feels like he solidifies a little, like his edges become real again.  

“Mmm,” Yuuri nods, in understanding. “Like getting hit by a bus, isn’t it?”  He kneels down and clicks at the tiny pale cat, reaching out toward it as though he’s going to pick it up. It hisses wildly, scratches at the air, jumps back, and raises its tail, spitting in Yuuri’s direction.

Otabek stares blankly, in something like familiarity.

“Is that--” He starts and is unable to finish what he wants to ask because it seems inconsistent with reality and his mind rebels. "Is that Yuri?”

“Um,” Yuuri responds, “yes. He’s very bad at shape shifting, this took ages.  They are better at changing age or hairstyles, not changing like this. He did okay. I thought he needed to see you, but he was worried you didn't want to see him, so I thought this was a good idea."  Otabek doesn’t know what Yuuri means by most of that, but the cat practically yowls in anger.  Yuuri looks amused. “He also may be stuck, momentarily,”  _because he’s bad at this,_  hangs unsaid.

“Okay.” Otabek nods. “I’m going to sit down now.” He adds idly, to no one in particular, slamming a hand on his keyboard unintentionally, reaching out for something solid. He sits down on the floor heavily and, without stopping, tilts until he is lying down, closes his eyes.

“Otabek?” Yuuri says gently.

“Just a second.” Otabek responds. He takes a few breaths to common count, presses his hand over his heart and hears the reassuring, though slightly wild, thrum. He opens his eyes.

The small cat is peering at him, from a careful distance.  They stare at each other.  The cat’s eyes are the same as Yuri’s, jade and emerald all fractured and mixed.  And if it’s Yuri then--

“Hey, little-bitty kitty.” He coos, reaching out a hand, and there’s a snapping sound and electric current in the air and the cat becomes Yuri, his Yuri, wild-eyed, with his hair in knots, cat ears stuck on top of his head.  He shakes a few times, not fully in his body, the edges blurred, flicking his hair and scrunching his face, and then settles into human form. 

“I was  _not_  a little bitty kitty.” He practically spits, the edge of his voice still a cat’s hiss.  "That was a full-grown cat.”

“It was not.” Otabek rejoins, gravely, the exhilaration at seeing Yuri, solid and sitting in his apartment, so complete that it hurts.  “It was a kitten.”  He reaches a hand up and presses on his solar plexus to try and ease the painful joy sitting there.  Before Yuri can respond, Otabek tilts his head to Yuuri. “Thank you.”  Otabek means both for the help earlier, and for bringing Yuri to him.  Yuuri nods, smiles. Otabek flicks his eyes back to Yuri, who is smoothing his hair and adjusting his sleeves, seemingly trying to find the edges of his own human body again.  “Itty bitty kitty.” Otabek says again.

Yuri shoots Otabek a faux scathing look, that is completely undermined by his impish grin, a grin Otabek has so missed.  “At the very smallest, a kitten.”  Yuri responds, primly.  “Not itty-bitty.”  

“Well, I’ll leave you to it then.” Other Yuuri says, and hops out the window.

Otabek watches from the floor and manages a vague sort of disbelief as Yuuri seems to bounce on thin air, curl up into a ball, and then a small jet-black bird flies away.

“Show-off.” Yuri huffs, angrily.

Yuri turns back to Otabek and they pause, as the weight of all of it sinks in and stills the air.  The apartment seems unnaturally silent.  The smile falls from Yuri’s eyes, his face faltering, and _oh,_ Otabek thinks, _oh right_.  Otabek is desperate to reach out, but Yuri is curling into himself, and Otabek knows better than to force physical contact.  He sits up so he can think more clearly.

Yuri stands and backs away immediately, using closing the window as a cover.  Otabek watches Yuri’s hands shake on the handles, and feels something sad and cold clutch in his chest.  Yuri squats back down, near Otabek but away, keeping a careful and measured distance, as though he has thought about how close would be too close.  Otabek’s heart breaks.

“Would you like some tea,” Yuri asks flatly, tracing a shape on the floor and not looking at Otabek, “or would you like me to leave.”

“Tea.” Otabek manages rapidly.  “Tea.  Please.”

Yuri looks up startled, clearly having been expecting to be told to leave.  A smile flits across his face, but he quickly controls him expression and then busies himself in the kitchen. 

Otabek reaches up for his phone, connects to the speakers, and puts on Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op.13.  _Winter Daydreams._   Movement two.  Yuri liked this one, always liked this one best.  Said it made him feel safe, like coming inside and curling up on the couch, the smell of warm food being prepared, everyone you love there smiling, filtered sounds of laughter, the snow and wind beating on the windows. The promise that winter isn’t all darkness and death.  

Sometimes Yuri danced to it, slow and momentous, reaching for something that Otabek couldn’t see.    

Otabek watches Yuri stop.  He doesn’t turn around, but he rests his hands on the counter as though they are very heavy and takes a breath that makes his shoulders shake. Otabek sorts through the words in his head, so that when Yuri comes back he will be able to use the right ones.  

Yuri brings them tea, and settles down across from Otabek, maintaining the distance from before.

“Thank you.” Otabek says, accepting the proffered mug.  “Hi.”

“Hi.” Yuri responds.  He’s holding his mug furiously tight, his knuckles white. “I didn’t think you wanted to see me, but Yuuri said--” Yuri pauses and clears his throat. “If he was wrong I can leave.  I’ll leave you alone. I wanted you to know what I was, but I didn’t mean to tell you like that or to have--” he blinks rapidly, frustrated and bites his lip.  “I understand that it’s too much,” with each word he tightens his grip on his cup, “I’m sorry, for everything, and I wanted you to know that I won’t bother yo--”

“I wanted to apologize.” Otabek cuts in. Yuri looks up, wariness, shock, and confusion fighting for dominance on his face. “I got overwhelmed with everything.” Otabek says, and wants to reach out across the space between them, but tempers his feelings and just shifts, so that he is a little closer to Yuri.  “I didn't tell you things well and I didn’t react well when you told me and I’m sorry.  I needed some time to process, process everything, there was just.  There was so much.  I didn’t treat you right.  It wasn’t your fault.”

Yuri blanches and seems to want to say  _but it was._

“I understand,” Otabek continues because he’s been thinking about it carefully, “that the storm was you, but that doesn’t make _it_ your fault.” He thinks there will always be a pang that Yuri caused that storm, probably worse for Yuri than for him.  Otabek has his own grief, but knows Yuri didn’t cause Erasyl to be on the road or on a motorcycle. Knows that Yuri didn’t reach down and flick Erasyl off of the bike, like some wanton and drunk god. Knows that if Yuri is a god of winter, then winter storms are bound to happen. Yuri doesn't cause them to cause pain. Things just happened in a terrible way.  Sometimes things just happen in a terrible way.  Otabek shifts closer, lightly touching their knees together.  “Sometimes things just happen in a terrible way, Yura.”  He whispers.  Yuri’s head snaps up.  A chill goes straight to Otabek's heart when he realizes the nickname might not be welcome.  “Can I still call you Yura?”  

Yuri nods, and then bows his head again, his hair falling in a curtain around his face.  Otabek sees the tears, but doesn’t reach out to brush them away.  Right now it would be unwelcome, he thinks.  He wants to touch so badly, but Yuri looked like he used to, back when they first met, like he was ready to run.  Otabek's heart aches with how much he's missed Yuri, with how helpless he feels right now, with how inadequate words are to express what he feels.

“Where were you?”  Otabek asks, the words falling out of his mouth before he means them to.  “I’ve been looking for you,” he knows he sounds desperate, but he can’t help it.  The suddenness of all of it surging through his body unexpectedly, like a shock, mixing with the exhaustion, and he feels the tears rise in his eyes, unbidden and honest. “I was looking for you and I couldn’t find you, Yura, I couldn’t find you, where were you?” 

Yuri puts down his mug too rapidly, tea sloshing, and takes Otabek’s tea from his hands, puts it next to the piano stool.  Why were they still on the floor?  Otabek almost wants to laugh; he has a couch, has proper chairs.  Why did he choose the floor?  He chokes on the sound.  It’s more of a whimper than a laugh.

“I’m sorry.”  Yuri whispers.  “Beka, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.  I didn’t mean to leave you like that.”  Yuri touches Otabek's face lightly, wipes away a tear with a thumb, cradles Otabek’s face in his hand.  There are thick tears at the edges of Yuri’s eyelids and they roll down his face slowly.  He’s not trying to hide them anymore.  “Where did you go?”  Yuri asks back, in a whisper.  “I came back to try to talk to you, but you weren’t here and you kept being  _not here_  and I couldn’t find you, no matter what I did.  It was so cold, you were so upset with me, I couldn’t stop it, and I just wanted to see you, but you weren’t there, weren’t anywhere.  I thought you hated me.  I thought you had a right to.  I just wanted to see you and say I was sorry.  I just wanted to see you.” His voice breaks.

Otabek can’t think where to begin-- _I'm so sorry,_ _no I don’t hate you, no, I wouldn’t have a right to, I never could, I’m so sorry, it was too much, it was all too much, oh Yura, I’m so sorry--_ the words flurry inside his head and fight to crawl out of his mouth first.  He can’t speak.  He knew what he did, but seeing the effect of disappearing to Almaty without a word for so long, it’s too much.  Otabek reaches out and wraps his arms around Yuri. Yuri freezes, but doesn’t pull away.

“I’m sorry.”  Otabek whispers.  Yuri trembles under his palms, one hand going up to Otabek’s shirt and clenching in the fabric. Otabek pulls Yuri closer, pulls Yuri onto his lap.  “Yura, I’m so sorry.”  That seems to snap the stillness in Yuri. He wraps his arms around Otabek’s neck and clings.  Otabek breathes in deep, the fine feathered hair on the nape of Yuri’s neck against his lips.  He missed the sugared cherry varenya smell of Yuri.  They hold each other for a moment, whisper apologies, press the words into each other’s skin with their fingertips.  _I'm so sorry, Yura,_ Otabek says it until he loses count and Yuri nods into his shoulder, shushes him.  They sit and breathe. 

“Can I—can I.” Yuri pulls back and rests his forehead against Otabek’s, so gently it almost hurts. “Can I show you what I am, but properly this time, Beka?” He asks it like he expects Otabek to say no.

“Yes, Yura, of course.”

“Are you sure?” Yuri asks, fixing him with a desperate look. 

“Yes.” Otabek says, letting go of Yuri’s waist.  “Yes, I want you to.”

Yuri nods and scoots back, off Otabek’s lap, leaving a distance between them.  He lifts his hands. 

_Magic._

It starts to snow, powdered snow, not collecting on the floor, but hovering in front of Otabek, dancing in the air, shimmering. He reaches a hand out to touch, and it coats him like a glove, slides down his arm and up his neck, brushes over his cheeks like a kiss, leaves behind a chill and the faintest wet as it goes. It swirls around him in unimaginable shapes, coating the entire world in its translucent shimmer.  The air seems to be dancing with it; it’s never ending, but somehow only chills him, doesn’t make him shiver, doesn't leave snowdrifts or melted puddles.

For a moment, it wraps him up so completely he can’t see Yuri, can only see a million different crystallized patterns in the air.  It’s the most exquisite thing Otabek has ever seen.  It dissipates and leaves behind nothing but Yuri.

Yuri is silent; wavering in the harsh lights of Otabek’s apartment, frost on his eyelashes, drips of ice off his fingers. Yuri breathes out frosted air, as though he is bitter cold.  His eyes flash like shattered frozen emeralds.  _Magic,_  Otabek’s mind breathes out. 

“Do it again.” Otabek demands hoarsely, when he finds his voice.  
  
Yuri looks at him, perplexed. 

“Don’t you want to run away or tell me to leave?”  He asks.  “This,” he waves his hands in the air, “this is all…”

“No.”  Otabek says firmly.  “Yura, I don’t want to run away from you.”

“Oh,” Yuri breathes out, almost shyly, “ _oh_.  Okay.”  He breaks into the purest smile that Otabek has seen, warm enough to melt all the ice in the world _._ Otabek thinks he should have always know magic was real, it’s clear by the way Yuri smiles.  If that’s not magic, than nothing else is. 

Otabek crosses the space between them, pulls Yuri close to him. Yuri nestles his head under Otabek’s chin, whispers _oh_ again, like he’s entranced that Otabek doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want Yuri to leave. Otabek’s heart refuses to beat properly and he wants this, just this, for however long he is allowed to have it.  _Just this. Please._

“Again, Yura.” He whispers into Yuri’s hair. “Show me what you are again.”

Yuri pulls back, smile radiant, lifts up his hands, and does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri can't create destinies or change 'fates'. But he nudges people toward things that will help them, away from bad things, towards paths that will benefit them and the world, etc. so he's trying to help Yuri and Otabek because (a) he loves them (b) he sees good endings for them but also bad ones. He knows they have to choose but he wants to remind them there are good ones to choose from.


	4. accarezzevole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> otabek and yuri have a serious talk on the couch and then, um, do other things on the couch.
> 
> //
> 
> Otabek feels drunk on the sight of Yuri, like a gulp of cold over-sugared cherry nalivka. If Yuri asked him to right now, Otabek is sure he would promise to fight God himself to keep Yuri his. "I promise," Otabek whispers hoarsely.
> 
> Magic is real, why not this magic too?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> accarezzevole is a (rarely used) marking on sheet music to indicate a piece should be played in an expressive and caressing manner.

They have done this for the better part of a week. 

_I'll come over again tomorrow?_  Yuri asks each time before he leaves, offering Otabek an easy out.  Each time the same answer,  _yes, Yura, please do_.  A soft hug.   _Okay, Beka_.  A whisper of fingers on Otabek's hand.   _Bye, Yura._  The sound of a branch falling. 

Yuri always disappears in front of Otabek's eyes, a reminder of what he is.  

Otabek sorts through his thoughts; Yuri sorts through his.  When Yuri returns, they hug, holding on.  They navigate being around each other again, now that everything and nothing has changed.

_At least let me be his friend_ , Otabek thinks, each time Yuri ducks his head shyly and says hello, sinking into Otabek’s hug.  _At least this,_  when Yuri smiles so honestly his nose scrunches and his eyes disappear, _I know it's all gone wrong but please.  At least this._   

Otabek knows that he loves Yuri.  He had realized that before everything went sideways.  At the time, he had decided to wait and see if it was the same kind of love that Yuri had for him, the same kind of love that Yuri wanted from him.  Otabek knew that he wanted Yuri at the very least as a friend and, if Yuri had only wanted his friendship, had been prepared to hold his love close and quiet.  That was why he had told Yuri about Erasyl, had peeled back the layers of his chest to show why his heart hurt, trusting Yuri with it, with Otabek's grief, with things that could be used to break Otabek's heart.  It occurred to him much later, after, that this was what Mila meant when she said that trust was one of the strongest kind of magic.

But telling had forced them both to remember that pain is always there, waiting to pounce and push you to the ground, rub your face in the dirt.  Now Yuri’s magic sits between them.  Erasyl's death sits between them, puts a little bit of the old wariness back into Yuri's eyes.  They skirt around it, around these things, and reach out with glancing touches.  Try to figure out what it means.  Try to figure out how it all fits.  Trying to figure out how they fit.  

They are not talking about nice things, so far today.  

Otabek had spent most of the morning apologizing for disappearing, for running, for being weak in the face of the unknown, the words rolling off his tongue once he started; he felt helpless to stop them.  To the point where Yuri had stopped accepting apologies, stopped rolling his eyes and saying  _y_ _ou already apologized for that, Beka,_ and started threatening to injure him--  _like actually gonna eviscerate you if you don’t shut up, you fucked UP, I get it, I would have fucked up too, Christ, STOP fucking a_ pologizing.

Otabek had managed to apologize once more before Yuri had shrieked, jumped him, and tumbled them to the floor.  Everything had stopped. 

Yuri had buried his face in Otabek’s chest and made a broken and strangled sound.  Otabek had tightened his grip, but Yuri had pulled back and sat up, straightened his body into that thin steel line, like the edge of a sword.  Otabek hated when Yuri did that.  Knew it was necessary sometimes; didn't want it to be necessary in front of him.

They sit, cross-legged, facing each other.  Otabek wants to reach out and tuck the soft strands of Yuri's hair behind his ear, cup Yuri’s face in his hand, stroke Yuri's cheek until Yuri looks up, lean forward and-- Otabek stills his hands on his knees.  

_That would be a bad idea_ , he counsels himself.  (Yuri had hugged him for a long time today, burying his nose in the crook of Otabek's neck and breathing deep.)   _Still a bad idea,_ Otabek tells himself.  If Erasyl were here, he would adamantly deny that it’s a bad idea.  He would describe it as the best idea. 

Otabek decides to partially take Erasyl's advice, and reaches out to touch Yuri’s hand.  Yuri doesn’t look up but, after a few seconds, his fingers relax.  Otabek holds the touch, shifting closer, and Yuri moves, turns his palm up toward Otabek's, laces their fingers together so lightly that Otabek thinks a breeze would make them fall apart. 

Otabek’s pulse thunders in his ears.  

“If we stop meeting?” Otabek asks, feeling brave from Yuri’s hand touching his.  “If this is the last time I see you.”  Viktor and Mila had repeated much the same and now Otabek wants to know _._  

“You’ll forget.”  Yuri says flatly.  “First the magic, like how little kids know there is magic until they don't.  When you were in Almaty, it started to get weak around the edges, right?” 

“Yes,” Otabek sees no reason to lie.  “I wanted to think I’d made up the magic bit, did think that a little.  I didn’t forget you though.” 

“Eventually you would.  Maybe after that you might see something or someone and think ‘oh, what the fuck happened to that guy, what was his name’ and then I'll just slip away again, you won't really  _remember_ remember.”  

“Just like that?”  Otabek asks, tightly.  

Yuri nods.  “Simple as falling off a cliff.”  He doesn’t look up. 

“But you didn’t.”  Otabek says.  Demands. Returns his gaze to their interlaced fingers.  _You didn’t,_ he tells himself, and tries to ignore the part of his brain that hisses  _almost did._  

“No,” Yuri says, soft, “not then." Something like  _it was just not yet_ , hangs in the air between them.  “The longer we know each other the harder it is to forget.  I, like, linger.  Like a bad dream, the way those get stuck in your brain?  Basically, I’m a  _nightmare_.”  He pops the word like a piece of bubblegum. 

“You are not a nightmare.” Otabek disagrees, and looks up to see the gentle curve of a grin on Yuri’s face, half-hidden by his hair.  Brashness is Yuri’s cover, but this is not that.  It is sweet and soft and  _teasing,_  an attempt to diffuse tension, to ease both their hearts.  “You’re nightmarish.”  Otabek amends, slumping back on his side of the couch, regretting it immediately when Yuri’s hand falls from his.  

Yuri's grin widens and then falters.  

The air stills.

The rules of magic make no sense, even to those who are magic, and that feels like spiders under Otabek’s skin.  He wants the crisp clean lines of sheet music, of words on a page, of the pitch control on his turntable.  Do this and get this; play these notes for dissonance, these to resolve in consonance; use the word love or lust or passion or adoration and adjust the definition of the sentence; stress to choose meaning as you wish:  _I_  love him, I love _him,_  I _love_ him. 

“Would you forget me?”  Otabek asks, and Yuri laughs breathless and bitter, doesn’t even have to answer.  

_Of course not._   Magic, it seems, is not just unstable and unpredictable; it’s also unfair.    

“What’s the other option, we keep meeting, I'll keep remembering?”  

“At some point,” Yuri looks up at him, eyes deep with age, green like moss, “you die.”  

Otabek inhales sharply.  He feels selfish enough to admit, even if only to himself, that he wants to grow old with Yuri, to get laugh lines with Yuri, to tease each other about reading glasses and grey hair. He hadn’t considered much beyond the right now, hadn’t bothered to get farther than right now in his thoughts, still tripping over magic as a concept, but then the other day--

_I can match your age,_  Yuri had said, suddenly taller and older in the light of the setting sun,  _want to see me be an old man?_   Instantly older than Otabek, Yuri in his early 30’s, aging in front of Otabek's eyes.   _No,_  Otabek had said breathless and dizzy, closing his eyes,  _stop that, Yura_. 

—Now he can’t stop imagining growing old with Yuri.  Can’t get it out of his head, spent hours in bed staring at the ceiling thinking  _maybe_ , thinking  _what if_ , thinking  _please._   Thinking Yuri had shown him for a reason. 

“I don’t know why,” Yuri adds, “some people die and become this.”  He waves his hands at himself.  “Where most spirits go it’s…we mostly we don't get to interact.  I saw my Grandpa once.  When I saw him, I don’t know if he didn't remember me or didn't see me or couldn't see me or.  I don't know.  I visit his grave now instead.  Besides, we have business here and, in theory, we forget how to be human. Viktor before Yuuri was very different.  I was different, before-” Yuri shifts and looks away. 

The unfinished  _before you_  slides like hands around Otabek’s neck and squeezes tight.  

_ Licking knives, it makes you cruel.   _

_ There are many kinds of dead.   _

“If you want to leave,” Otabek says each word like bile, as hard to get out and as bitter, “if you don’t want to see me anymore, than Í understand.”  Because if it will always be Otabek who forgets or dies, that means it will always be Yuri who is left with the grief.  Grief is hard enough in the limited mortal span, leaving Yuri alone with it for eternity-- Yuri having to lose him multiple ways, in death and then beyond-- it seems a word beyond cruel. 

_Whatever Yuri wants,_  Otabek repeats in his head, steeling himself,  _anything else is the worst kind of selfish._

He’s not sure Yuri choosing to leave would be wrong.  Yuri has the others; it’s not that he would be alone.  He would just be without Otabek.  Like he was before.  If it happened now then, like a breakup, time and comfort would ease any pain from losing Otabek’s friendship.

_But please no,_  Otabek whispers in his head, feeling dizzy.   _Please, please no._   His brain flashes through memories he would lose; memories that he wants to keep like they are marbles, collect up, and put in a jar in the sunlight to show other people-- _look,_ _see how good this world can be?_

Yuri doing ballet warm-ups, using the kitchen counter as a barre.  Yuri collapsing on Otabek's bed in laughter.  Yuri pressed up against Otabek in the club, whispering in his ear, smelling like gin and fresh limes.  Yuri spinning in a snowstorm, delighted, tongue stuck out to catch flakes.  Yuri tumbling into Otabek’s apartment and holding out a hand,  _Beka, c’mon, we’re late-late-late_ , eyes bright with the plans he has made for them.

He knows all memories fade, but they do that over time, not sharp and sudden.  It's not fair.  It’s not fair that magic can wring his mind out and discolor his memories, take them away without him knowing, make them into things not worth remembering. Those thought of those memories turning into dark clouded seen through a dark window of a dark house on a dark night, ‘who was that guy’ fragments sickens Otabek.  These aren’t Yuri doing magic, why can’t Otabek keep these things, these real things?  He refuses to give them up.  The thought of it makes him livid.   

Yuri looks at him from under his eyelashes.  Otabek wants to scream.

“It’s up to you.”  He manages to get out.   

Yuri tilts his head and looks like he does before he flashes out of existence, before he leaves Otabek alone at night.  Otabek feels trapped and scared and sick. 

He’ll write Yuri down, he thinks wildly.  He’ll compose Yuri with piano keys and violin strings.  He’ll paint Yuri into the fabric of the world; he will write concertos and sonatas and they will never be as real, but he will recreate something like Yuri, and he will remember.  He will make everyone know Yuri, know what it feels like to see Yuri smile.  He will defy the heavens over and over if he has to.  He will not forget. 

Yuri takes a deep breath and leans forward, rocks up onto his knees, presses their foreheads together.  His fingers dance on Otabek's shoulders for balance. 

Yuri brushes his lips against Otabek's, light as a dusting of snow. 

Otabek's heart stops. 

“That's not fair."  Yuri whispers.  "Up to me, don't say that, what works like that? Beka, you’re too  _noble_ , always putting other people first, protecting them from pain.  You overthink things, you don’t even always tell me what you want but you should-- you can.  You can be selfish with me, Beka. I want you to be selfish, I want you to tell me if you want me to stay, otherwise how do I know, how do I know if you want me here, if you want--” Yuri cuts himself off and takes an unsteady breath.  The silence presses in from all sides.  Otabek can't speak.  “Fine.  It’s up to me.  Don’t go.  Don't make me go.  Please."  Yuri breathes the word into Otabek's mouth like it’s a spell, and Otabek swallows it, feels it travel down to the pit of his stomach. 

_Please._

Yuri kisses Otabek again, lingering this time.  Every nerve in Otabek's body sings from the slow, soft drag of Yuri's lips on his.  Yuri pulls back; the centimeters between them feel impossibly far.  Yuri's hands tremble, and Otabek realizes that Yuri is waiting to see what Otabek does.  Otabek also realizes he hasn’t moved, his hands are still clenched on his knees. 

Yuri starts to sit back.

“Don't go.”  Otabek gets out, his voice rougher and lower than he means it to be.  Yuri inhales sharply, hands contracting, hard and quick on Otabek’s shoulders.  Otabek puts his hands in between them and reaches up, a hand tangling into Yuri’s hair, the other on the back of Yuri's neck, pulling him closer. There is a thrumming in Yuri’s chest where the heart goes.  Otabek can feel it against his forearm, like a bird’s wings beating against wind.  "I don’t want you to go, Yura.  And I’m not going, not unless you tell me you want me to.  But I promise, I won’t forget you, Yura."

He pushes the words into Yuri's mouth, like Yuri can bite down on them and taste them.  He has no proof of this, no way to make this true, except that he believes it with every fiber of his soul.  He kisses Yuri hard.

“I will remember you, Yura.”’

Yuri whimpers, sending an electric shiver up Otabek's spine, and then clambers on top of Otabek, straddling him and pushing him back against the couch.  Yuri looks down at Otabek, green eyes fierce and wild and utterly defenseless.  

"Say it again." Yuri demands, his hair a curtain around Otabek, hands and voice shaking. “Say it again, Beka.” 

Otabek feels drunk on the sight of Yuri, like a gulp of cold over-sugared cherry nalivka.  If Yuri asked him to right now, Otabek is sure he would promise to fight God himself to keep Yuri his.  "I promise," Otabek whispers hoarsely.

Magic is real, why not this magic too? 

Yuri’s eyes search his face wildly, looking for something that Otabek cannot see. 

“I trust you.” Yuri whispers, tense shoulders softening, as though in awe that trust is something he can do, as though in awe that he believes Otabek. “How could I not?" Yuri looks at Otabek like he is something infinitely better than good and Otabek feels hopelessly inadequate- his lips are chapped, his hair is messy, he has bags under his eyes; he’s just human, just normal.  He’s mortal and he's not so bold as to think himself special.

Yuri smiles like Otabek is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

Yuri leans over and kisses both of Otabek’s cheeks, his eyelids, presses their noses together and then pulls back just enough to see Otabek properly again.

Otabek sees the word devotion in Yuri’s eyes, in the way Yuri looks at him, and it shakes him to the core, warms him from his stomach.  Otabek reaches his hands up and runs his thumbs over Yuri’s cheekbones incredulously, as gently as he can.  Yuri kisses the base of Otabek’s thumb.  

“Look at you.” Otabek whispers.  Otabek’s fingers ghost over the pale blush that stains Yuri’s cheeks in response to the words.  He trails a finger over Yuri’s eyebrows, his eyelashes, the bridge of his nose, the arch of his cheekbones, the shape of his jaw.  Yuri shivers under the touch, his eyes drift shut but he opens them almost immediately, like he doesn’t want to lose sight of Otabek.  “Thank you for letting me see you,” Otabek says, "not just the magic parts, but  _you._ Just.  You." The parts of Yuri that are soft and vulnerable; the parts that Yuri desperately hides from the world; the parts of Yuri that entrance Otabek.  “I mean, _Yura_ , look at _you_.”  Otabek whispers again, helplessly. “Look at you, Yura,” he feels exposed and he’s glad for it, like Yuri can see his soul, will be able to see himself how Otabek sees him, will be able to understand the words that Otabek can’t seem to find. "My Yura.” 

A tear pools in the corner of Yuri’s eye, and Otabek lifts up, kisses it away.  It dissolves on his tongue, ice cold, a droplet of frost. 

“You mattered to me before I knew you were magic.  You matter to me without the magic.”  Otabek murmurs in the space between them, kissing Yuri softly, settling back to look up at him. 

Yuri inhales shakily, more tears falling, and closes his eyes.  Otabek holds Yuri’s face gently, and smudges away the tracks of frost the tears leave on Yuri’s cheeks.  Yuri puts his hands over Otabek’s, and holds on, stroking Otabek’s fingers gently, opening his eyes and locking gazes determinedly.  

“Idiot.”  Yuri mutters, fiercely sweet and possessive.  “You matter to me too.  From the start, from the very start.  What was I supposed to do when you looked at me like that?  I couldn’t tell you what I was because- because anyone would run away from me, and I didn't want you to.  I didn't want to lose you.  I didn’t want you to think I was a monster.  Why don’t you, Beka?"  Yuri licks his lips, voice desperate.  "Why don’t you-- why do you look at me like this still?  Like you want to know what I’m thinking, like you want to see me smile and mean it, like I’m something good and precious?  After everyth-- why, Beka?”  Yuri leans down and kisses Otabek again, soft and unsure, so Otabek kisses back strong and sure, holds Yuri’s face close to his when their lips part.

_Just this.  No matter what, even if he leaves me, I will have this memory, looking up at him like this._ Otabek prays, demands, threatens, cajoles.  _If there's magic in the world then let me have some too._

“You’re magic, not a monster.”  Otabek whispers.  “And I look at you like you're good and precious because it’s true.”    

Yuri shakes his head, whispers  _Beka,_ turns and kisses the palm of Otabek’s hand, then kisses Otabek again, pressing and searching with his hands, lips soft and careful, like he can't believe Otabek is there and real.   Like he can’t believe that love is something that he is allowed to have.

Otabek lets his hands travel down, skimming, strokes the skin above Yuri’s waistband with his thumbs reverently, then runs one hand up Yuri’s spine and into his hair, wrapping the locks around his hand, threading it through his fingers, lifting up to kiss Yuri at a better angle.  

Otabek is lost in the feeling, in the touch of Yuri's mouth until Yuri pulls back, slowly and shakily, reluctantly.

"I’ve got it.” Yuri says, voice haughty but wavering.  Otabek drags his thumb over Yuri's lips and Yuri pauses to kiss Otabek’s thumb lightly, “I'll make it so you can't forget me no matter what, even if you wanted to."  His hands shake where he’s placed them on Otabek’s chest and Otabek shivers because that's his Yuri, defiant and vulnerable and incredibly strong, all at the exact same moment in the exact same space.  

Otabek’s been dying for it, for his Yuri back.  Dying for it since the second he saw Yuri outside the club and noticed the tick of a smile was back to being gone from Yuri’s mouth, back to how Yuri was when they first met.  Otabek grins at Yuri and lifts up from the couch, kisses the corner of Yuri's mouth, where the smirks flicks upward, where his Yuri lives.  

Yuri hums in approval and  looks down at Otabek with bright and happy eyes and they grin at each other, lost, for how long Otabek couldn't judge.  

Otabek kisses Yuri lightly, once, twice, three times, and lifts his hands up to tuck Yuri’s hair behind his ears, slide his fingers down the strands. 

"I would never want to forget you, not matter what.  Not even if you leave me crying in a snow bank in a heap, like Viktor that time when he and other Yuri got in that weird not-fight over that girl who doesn’t exist."  Otabek says, and is rewarded with Yuri’s smirk, his huff of laughter, his scoff of  _those idiots_.  “I would still want to remember you.” One of Otabek’s hands travels down to Yuri's hip to keep Yuri close, and he uses his other hand in Yuri’s hair to pull Yuri’s head back down, runs his lips over Yuri's, and then traces Yuri’s jaw and down his neck with soft kisses.  "I would never want to forget anything about you."  He traces his tongue over Yuri's collarbone, enjoying the breathless sound Yuri makes, and laps at the salt of Yuri's skin in the depression between them.  "Never." He whispers again and sucks at the skin, soothes it with his tongue.  "I would never want to."  

Otabek buries his face in the crook of Yuri's neck and breathes in the smell of Yuri, while Yuri whispers his name over and over.  Otabek flutters soft kisses over every inch of exposed skin, over Yuri’s collarbone, pushing Yuri’s sweater down when it falls off one shoulder.  He spreads his fingers over Yuri’s stomach, lightly, rubbing the line of skin above Yuri’s waistband with his thumb, other hand across Yuri’s lower back to hold him still, not meaning to tease, just wanting to touch.  

He soothes the trembling skin of Yuri’s stomach.  

"I'm going to die," Yuri whimpers, somewhere above him, hands clenching in Otabek’s hair, nails dragging down the buzzed sides, "if you keep doing that." 

“Don't say that." Otabek mutters into Yuri’s skin, simultaneously irritated by the purposeful irony of Yuri's choice of words and thrilled because that’s his Yuri- irreverent, tongue stuck out, ragged around the edges, making pirozhki and humming Motown hits under his breath, oversize sweaters and sinfully tight leather pants, piano sonata at 3am because _I can't sleep Beka please you have to play for me_ , whispering borscht recipes into Otabek's ear like they're dirty talk, long lean lines of his legs while he stretches, kicking a table out of his way at the club, drying Otabek's hair and giggling after they get stuck in unexpected summer rainstorms, brash and loud and surprisingly gentle, impudently wonderful Yuri.  

Otabek’s not sure if Yuri can die, what that word would mean, and he definitely doesn’t want to think about that right now, not with Yuri on top of him like this, in his hands like this, the air between them tight and hot.  

Otabek kisses his way back down Yuri's neck, listening to Yuri and committing the sound to memory. 

“Gonna die.”  Yuri whimpers, hands tugging at Otabek’s hair.  Otabek reels.

_Yura,_ Otabek wants to say, _Yura please,_ but he doesn’t know what he is asking for.  Yuri seems to know though, because he pulls Otabek's hair lightly to turn Otabek’s face up, kisses him solidly, and then bends and feathers the softest of kisses up and down Otabek's neck, pushing him back on the couch. 

“Don't say that though,” Otabek protests weakly, head falling back, drowning in Yuri's loose hair, hands skimming down Yuri’s side, aware his voice is too breathless to hold weight.  

"Or what," Yuri taunts with a greedy smile, when he pulls back, resting his hands on Otabek’s shoulders. "What are you gonna do if I keep saying it, Beka?" Head tilted the perfect angle for innocent remarks.  “Kill me?" 

Otabek hisses in frustration and Yuri shifts, his legs settling into a wider stretch.  Otabek's entire body burns. Yuri looks at Otabek, terribly wild and beautiful; it’s a look that makes Otabek think of the word adoration and he knows it is mirrored in his own eyes, can feel the word simmering beneath his skin. 

Yuri grins, mischievously, and leans forward, blows a freezing gust of wind into Otabek's ear, one that sends a shiver up Otabek's spine.  Yuri kisses him with iced lips, their combined warmth melting the thin sheen of frost into Otabek's mouth, his fingers lightly dancing over Otabek’s skin; he presses kisses down Otabek’s neck. 

"Yura." Otabek manages to whimper, head spinning, as Yuri pulls back and locks eyes with him, shifts again, purposefully, biting his lower lip, one hand tripping lower and lower down Otabek's chest, stomach, to the edge of Otabek's sweatpants, fingers ice cold through Otabek’s shirt.

Yuri laughs like a cold clear brook and grins like the end of the world, and Otabek knows he's gone gone _gone_ , for however long Yuri will let him be at his side, Otabek will be there.  There’s still things they need to talk about, to figure out, but for right now, for right now, this is enough.  This is more than enough.  Yuri's smile is all there is in the world.   

“Be quiet.” Otabek whispers, pulls Yuri back toward him, unable to stop his smile in response, “and kiss me again.”  

“Okay.” Yuri hums in acquiescence, not fighting the command, except that he keeps whispering Otabek’s name like it’s a prayer, over and over until Otabek is drunk on the sound of his name on Yuri’s lips, the breathy way Yuri sighs, the sharp sounds he makes, stuttering the syllables of Otabek’s name and then slurring them together, the feel of Yuri in his arms, Yuri's fingers running up and down his sides, the way Yuri pulls back every so often, as though to check that Otabek is real. 

_I will not let you take him from me,_ Otabek prays, in warning, to whoever is listening,  _no matter what, you will not take him,_  he threatens, and then he stops thinking and loses himself in Yuri’s hands. 


End file.
